I was a writer. I was a
dissident. A refusenik. An uncooperative.
They sent me away to the
East, to mosquito tormented summers, and freezing winters, and there
I became a killer as well. I came back from a day's forced labour to
find a guard trying to sodmise my friend in our barracks. I stove in
the back of his head with a shovel so hard his brains came out of his
mouth.
After I was beaten nearly to
death in a punishment cell, it took some time for the authorities to
debate whether I was to be executed or not. While the maggots set too
in my wounds, ironically saving my life as the ate out infected flesh
that I had no hot tea spoon to cautheterise, a train was summoned to
take me North. No such line was supposed to exist here. No matter, it
did.
Further North, all the trees
disappeared and the ground was hard permaforst. I was thrown down
onto this concrete grass, and rifle butted onto a boat of low
quality, yet full of important looking officials. They removed my
shirt, at fingertips to avoid any lice. They then took readings, ran
a strange clicking instrument on me, then attached monitors to my
chest and head. They never looked in my eyes, with their red starred
caps and epaulettes.
We soon arrived at an
island, an island filling the horizon, and rising a fair way above
it, but devoid of no other features at all. We got closer. It had no
trees. No life. Black ground and vulcanised glass for some reason
unknown to me.
Then the guard said the only
two words that were spoken to me all journey.
“Novyaa Zemlya.”
It was done with a
humourless smile.
I was ungracefully clubbed
onto a makeshift jetty, and shivering cold struck me as hard as the
rifle butts. A vehicle awaited, again unmarked, and drove uphill onto
the frozen plateau of the island that a low sun taunted with hollow
warmth. After an hour of an ever unchanging scene, a low tower came
into view, and beside it a metal pole. Humiliatingly, a metal chain
was attached to my neck, and I was led from the vehicle to the pole,
where the chain was affixed. Another humourless guard looked me at
last in the eye, and spoke as he lit a cigarette then spat on the
ground.
“Kuzkina Mat.” - “Now
you will meet Mat's mother.”
Whatever could this mean?
A scientist checked me over
one last time, and then all got back into the vehicle which then
drove back the way it came, emitting harsh sounds and thick
pollutants.
Hours passed, the sun
circled a horizon it would never set beneath at these latitudes this
tim of year. Why I didn't pass from exposure I don't know, the extra
coat they gave me was not up to the task. My breath sank to the
ground crystallised.
An aeroplane was overhead. I
hadn't heard it in the wind shrieking across the barren uplands. From
its pregnant belly something dropped, something huge and black,
floating gently earthwards on a parachute of mothly silk. It came
closer, slow as a first kiss. And then, it became as a second sun.
The world went white, like
an endless photographic flash. I was frozen, and I was hotter than
could be imagined. The earth shook shortly afterwards, I saw it
ripple like waves in the sea I swear, in negative. The air blew
itself away, there was nothing to breathe.
And yet I was still alive.
Now flames came, flames of a
rich orange beauty I had never seen before. Down they came from the
sky, nearer and nearer, yet not nearer. They only got so close.
In the distance, low wood
and concrete structures slowly, and then slower, collapsed like a
tower of cards made by a sickly child. The blast came lower and
lower, but it never reached me. I could all but touch it, taste it.
My shadow was burnt away, but I was unaffected.
The buildings stopped
collapsing, and just hung there, wreckage suspended in nothing but
time. The flames did the same...they came to touching distance and
stopped.
Far away, the sea was a lake
of lava. Steam arose, things were still happening far away, but here,
on this wasteland, all had come to a stop. A seagull was devoid of
motion, half incinerated.
And that is how it has
remained ever since. Whatever time means now. I have written this
tale on the ground, etched in the frost with a stick, that only a
sharp eyed god might see. For you to read this, you must be one of
the Valhalans, and I salute you Sir.
As you should salute me. For
how many have survived the strike of Thor's Hammer?
Kuzkina Mat.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 25.04.14
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